Tolerable Social Mediafication

My people have asked me to get slightly more savvy in the social media and marketing realm. Since I’m a pretty low key sort of person, I wanted to step up my online game in a way that still felt suited to who I am. Basically, I didn’t want to get a sick feeling in my stomach as I proceeded. So here is how I handled the situation:

I hid in the bathroom weeping for 30 minutes. My people didn’t specifically ask me to do this, but I find that this is an effective first step in any great (or tolerable) plan.

I created a Facebook author page. I know many of y’all aren’t on Facebook, but if you are a voyeur over there and you choose to LIKE my shit, I would appreciate it. If you choose to SLANDER it, I’ll also be flattered.

I contacted Frank Dickinson over at Creating Conversations with Frank. I said, “I’m scared shitless and my supply of Pepto Bismol is very low.” Or something to that effect…

And Frank helped me clean up some broken and missing things about my site. (Thanks, Frank!) Specifically, here are some changes…

I’m using Livefyre to handle commenting on this site. I know my site isn’t one of those comment-intensive blogs, but I still like Livefyre’s conversational capabilities as opposed to my previous situation where you would never be notified if someone responded to you. I started to adjust the Livefyre color scheme to fit my dark depressing blog colors, but I still need to do a little more tweaking… Feel free to leave a comment about my commenting scheme.

I’m now using MailChimp for email subscriptions. If you’d prefer to keep up with this blog via email, I suggest you subscribe with the form on the right sidebar — my few subscribers are getting awfully lonely… I don’t want to reveal any numbers, but let’s just say that approximately 50% of my MailChimp subscribers have the name “Yuvi”. (If you’re already subscribed through my previous, slightly-broken Google Feedburner subscription, I suggest you unsubscribe from Feedburner and then subscribe through the new form… or let me know if you’d like me to switch things around for you…)

You’ll see other ways to stalk me via the sidebar on the right.

You can now pass word (which is similar to passing gas) about my non-crappy posts via Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ right from the bottom of each post. Again, I tried to keep this low key, but available.

I have a Contact form where you can slander me right from the confines of my overly dark and lonely website.

My people were pleased.

I sat on the couch and waited for the money to roll in.

VERY little money rolled in.

I hid in the bathroom again. I wept again.

My toddler pooped on the floor.

So that’s my current situation. Send me any comments. Or don’t.

Either way, thanks for getting this far down into my post. Even if it’s just a condescending sympathy read. I’m not above those.